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Sunday, May 1, 2011

All I could say was "WOW!"

by MaryAnn Carroll

Soooo.... I've been away for a while, but I'm baaaaack! And with me, I'm bringing along Colin Duncan. Let's all say hello to Colin. Altogether now......"Helloooo, Colin!"

Okay, now that we've gotten the introduction out of the way, I had asked Colin to share a little bit about himself. He so graciously did (on short notice I might add). Not only that, there is even more to learn about Colin so, be sure to check out to other places that I've made easy to access throughout this post. Personally, I enjoyed the YouTube videos.... And somehow, when I was visiting his youtube, I came across an absolutely hilarious BBC clip. It has absolutely nothing to do with jewelry, but it will make you laugh.... and if it doesn't, well.... I'm raising an eyebrow ahead of time right now... scratching my head.....and saying, "hmmmmmmm???"

Seriously though and getting right to the point.....

How long have you been doing what you do?

Around the mid 80's I left college and was looking for a way to make stuff that didn't require a big investment. I started gluing small components together to make wearable things. (I'd kind of like to start doing it like that again) I saw that I needed to learn some jewelry techniques that could handle the different types of material. The first pieces using this particular mixed metal technique were buttons. I made a small metal dish and melted some brass around steel machine screws and filed the lumps back to reveal the cross sections of the screws. Thereafter I up-scaled the process.

What got you interested in this type of art?

Maybe it's a deeply inbred Calvinist thing, but I much prefer to reuse materials and objects, rather than get new materials and make from scratch. I hate to too see the mountains of waste which are churned out. It's not a strictly ecological impulse - it's more to do with finding beauty in the obsolete, or that which was never meant to be seen; machine parts, for example. I have never been able to close the circle between 'art babble' and my work

After my filling my head full of pseudo intellectual art babble at Art College, I felt the need to get some making skills, so I did a Welding for Art night class. Thereafter I was lucky enough to get a job teaching in the same place. I had a class of (slightly dangerous) kids one of whom put it it very well, "This is brilliant, you get to play with fire!" Be afraid.

4 comments:

what a fantastic find and inspiration! so glad colin agreed to the interview... ok, off to take advantage of the links (i made myself promise about a year ago to read posts to the end before veering off on links... i can get diverted and not finish the article)...